Music for a Mid-Life Geek

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I've been quiet for too long here- and this is the one place I know I can come and say whatever I want and not have to worry about it bleeding over into my job or my place in the community. It's a slippery place, balancing yourself when you want to be screaming about what is happening in our world.

But this election- and I'm only going to pick on the Republican side here so be forewarned - this election is scaring me.

It scares me because when Donald Trump began this campaign, I thought he would never be taken seriously. I mean, really, how COULD he? The man has no political experience, no moral compass, no real morality or integrity when it comes to business. He really stands for the 1% wealth we all screamed about when the Wall Street crisis hit. He is someone who gains his power because of money and it's money he earns on the broken backs of everyone he uses and steps over- the companies that lost money - the people out of work. He has managed to survive poor business choices because our system rewards those with too much money to punish- he manages to have a following because of his very irritating 'truthiness'. And no one could take this seriously. But they have. They are.

Colbert coined the term 'truthiness' because of Fox "news", and "he defined truthiness as preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

What we have in our current political arena is a lot of truthiness. I've never really seen anything like this before. I'm seeing friends fall into this- posting things on social media that they never research, never look into, never even think about. Just knee jerk reactions to anything that mimics the truth they already WANT to be true.

My father was a Republican his entire life and would never have voted otherwise. And because I wanted to defy his politics- I registered Democrat the day I turned 18. But even then, he would tell me to NOT vote based on what a person says. Read their platform- he would tell me- read what their party's agenda is. THAT is what you're voting on. Not a person. A machine. An agenda. A platform.

People who have somehow decided it would be 'fun' to watch Donald Trump say what he wants from the porch of the White House has very little real understanding of how politics work- how our political system works. We will be the laughing stock of the world if he wins this election. Even his own party knows and understands that- and are baffled and confused about how to stop this ridiculous train he has running.

The joke will be on the American people- and on the complete and utter collapse of any kind of progress towards our common goals - if this man is elected.

It’s a...day in the tail end of 2015, which
means it’s time for yet another think-piece on Fallout 4. Not surprising – I,
like many others, have spent the last few weeks diving unapologetically into
Bethesda’s newest gorgeously realized, densely-packed post-nuclear sandbox.
However, due to circumstances beyond my control (there are two other guys in my
house who are also fully absorbed in the game, and they own the PS4s, so I'm outta luck), I’ve
found myself working through a little game called Undertale in my down-time. Admittedly, I’m a little late on the Undertale bandwagon, but I find
it’s just as easy to get absorbed in that game’s 8-bit, adorably-twee-but-secretly-quite-dark
world as it is to get absorbed in Bethesda’s blackly comedic monolith.

It’s weird how the two games
compliment and mirror each other: both are RPGs, both involve protagonists who
are accidentally catapulted into a quirky world full of colorful characters
that they don’t understand, and both end up shaping and redefining that place
through their actions and their interactions with the residents of that world.

And both of them have an
interesting relationship with violence.

Just one example of the unrelenting brutality of Fallout 4's comba -- wait, that's the wrong screenshot!

Undertale is, at its core, a
story about violence, and that core is reflected in the gameplay. Every battle
presents you with a simple option: Fight or Mercy. Neither option is easy –
they both require some time and footwork to pull off – but regardless of which
approach you take, the battle ends the same way, with a big “YOU WIN!” and a
handful of gold and/or experience. Trying to Fight through your enemies ends up
being something of a brutal grind, on par with your standard 8-bit throwback
RPG. However, if you take the time to examine them, you can figure out their
personalities, why they’re fighting, and (more importantly) how to resolve the
fight peacefully with the Mercy command. Immediately this sets the game apart
from other RPGs, by having nonviolence always be an option – one that challenges
and engages with the player just as much as, if not more than, combat does.

Fallout 4, by contrast, does have nonviolent ways to get out of
situations, but they’re few and far between. Bethesda, in designing the game,
clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the gunplay (perhaps realizing
that combat has always been one of the weakest parts of their games, dating all
the way back to Morrowind’s bland
hacking-and-slashing). It shows: combat is visceral and deeply satisfying, and using
a sniper rifle to explode a Raider’s head from a quarter-mile away in slow-motion
has lost none of its Grand Guignol-style appeal. The guns all feel solid and
hit with the right amount of force, the enemies are diverse and well-designed, and
for once the places you fight them in feel interesting. Bethesda employs a lot
more verticality in the setting than we’ve seen in prior games, forcing you to
fight uphill battles, find good vantage points on rooftops, and utilize the
environment to get a tactical upper hand. And it’s just unforgiving enough that you have to pay attention to stuff
like that: charging into a fight Call of
Duty-style usually ends with you getting blown to smithereens. Basically, the
combat just works. To quote Tony! Toni!
Tone!, it feels good.

So, with that in mind, the dearth
of nonviolent options makes sense, and I believe it had to be intentional on
Bethesda’s part: for one, it guides you (or forces you, if I’m being
uncharitable) into experiencing their shiny, retooled combat system. For two,
it reinforces the brutality and unforgiving nature of the game’s grim setting:
no, you can’t solve all of your problems by hugging them out. In the wasteland,
it’s kill or be killed.

I did find myself wishing that
there were a few more problems that I could
hug out, though.

Both Fallout 4’s Lone Survivor and Undertale’s
Human protagonist are ciphers: built purposefully vague so that you can project
your personality onto them. This allows both games to mold themselves around
the player’s actions to an extent – but even though Undertale’s system is more simplistic, I found myself feeling like
I had more agency in it than in Fallout 4’s.
For all its bells and whistles and nearly endless customization options, I felt
my play style straining more against Bethesda’s design. You see, I had
originally envisioned my character as a sort of charming rogue: more apt to
solve problems with guile, subterfuge, or diplomacy than at the end of a gun.
Thus, I put most of my attribute points into Charisma, Agility, and
Intelligence. But even just ten hours into the wasteland, any pretense was
gone: it had molded me into a merciless killing machine. Most quests fall into
the World of Warcraft, “go to X
location, kill Y enemies, get Z reward” pattern, and almost everything in the
Wasteland attacks on sight, trying to gank you just for the street cred. Oh,
sure, how I killed these enemies was
a little different than the norm, but I wasn’t the charismatic, crafty scoundrel
I had originally planned to be: I was a sniper, cold and ruthless. That isn’t
to say I wasn’t having fun – I was having a
blast – but it did feel like the game had forced me into a combative mold
by its very design.

It doesn’t help that Charisma, even despite Bethesda's extensive revamping, still feels like a dump stat, and the dialogue system has been rightly
criticized as overly vague and limiting. Most special dialogue options always
have a chance to work, and you can quicksave in conversations, so these options
can be “save-scummed” until you knuckle through to a success even with low
Charisma, and the higher-level perks the attribute gives you are unimpressive
or redundant. One of them prevents you from getting addicted to alcohol and
drugs, but there’s already no shortage of convenient options to get rid of
addictions if/when they ever do pop up. The abilities to take hostages and
charm wild animals into subservience are…situationally cool, but again, don’t
feel particularly useful when the game already provides you with plenty of
companions, both man and beast (and robot, and robo-man, and...you get the picture). The biggest benefit Charisma provides is
allowing you to unlock more options for the colonies you set up across the
wastes: hiring provisioners, establishing trade routes and building shops in
your towns, which is valuable, but hardly feels worth the sizable investment
(unless you’re me. I adore the
colony-building minigame). It has comparatively little impact on the game as a
whole, as you will still end up shooting your way out of the vast majority of the
jams you get into.

Compare this to even earlier
games in the series – Fallout 3,
while derided as the beginning of Fallout’s “CoD-ification” (and yes, being similar
to the most successful game franchise out there is seen as a serious insult in
gamer-dom. We’re a weird bunch.) still had plenty of chances for you to bluff or
intimidate your way out of situations to resolve them nonviolently, or at least
with a minimum of violence. Both of the main baddies in the campaign could be
talked out of their nefarious plans if your Speech skill was high enough. Its immediate
follow-up, New Vegas, had even more
options to double-deal, negotiate with, and wile your way around the dozens of
factions that were vying for control in the dusty Mojave. You could still
murder everything you came across, but you had the option to solve disputes without
shedding any blood, rudimentary and boring though those options could be at
times.

Pictured: An exciting thing.

And that right there is the
problem, I think: from gaming’s very beginning, violence has always been the
easiest and most immediate way to engage with the player. The power-trip you feel in Pac-Man when you snag that big dot and
turn the tables on your pursuers by devouring them whole, the gratifying feeling of getting the sword and slaying that giant yellow duck(?) in Adventure, blowing
up the space invaders in…Space Invaders
– the common logic follows that violence is hard-coded into gaming, because
violence is dramatic and exciting and easy to design for. The nonviolent
option is always less interesting: usually, you press the right button, and
then skip whatever fun fight the game had planned for you. It’s anticlimactic at best, and actively removes content from the game at worst...right?

Well, here comes Undertale, to fly in the face of all
that logic. In Undertale, it’s the
violence that’s rote and deadening, and it’s actually far more interesting to
use diplomacy and empathy to resolve fights. It imbues each and every
enemy with its own unique personality, and asks you to think critically in
order to get past them. A blind dog that
can only sense things when they move, forcing you to stand still whenever it tries to attack, and
then move in to pet it when its guard is down. An insecure ghost who you can
encourage and compliment to build his confidence until he becomes your friend.
A memorable early boss fight that forces you to simply withstand their attacks
and refuse to fight them until they realize they can’t bring themselves to kill you, and they let you
go. By enabling you to interact with these characters on a personal level, it
deepens the world and allows you to build an emotional connection to it, so
that fundamental decision – Fight or Mercy – starts to carry some real weight.

I guess you could murder this adorable ghost. If you wanted to. You monster.

This probably took a
lot of work on behalf of Undertale’s lone designer, Toby Fox, and it might seem prohibitively difficult or unreasonable
to ask Bethesda to deliver that same level of depth to every single enemy and
character in their vast, densely populated wasteland. But they’re close
already: the enemies in Fallout 4 all
have their own unique strategies and attitudes, and it’s not too much of a
stretch to see them adding a diplomatic/speech component to dealing with those
different types. The hulking Super Mutants, as you might imagine, are psychotically
aggressive – firing wildly at you, screaming insults, and throwing suicide
bombers your way. Maybe a show of strength or a successfully intimidating roar
makes them stand down, retreat, or even compliment your might? Raiders are canny,
hanging back and hiding behind turrets, mines, and grenade traps. Maybe if you
bluff them into thinking you’re not worth the trouble, they’ll leave you alone –
or if they have some kind of personal problem (a rival gang, a missing ally, damaged
defenses in their base, etc) they can even ask for your help? Complex logic
problems or paradoxical statements could freeze certain robots in their tracks,
bribing mercenaries could get them off your trail or even send them back to
deal with whoever called down the contract on your head, loud noises could bait
herds of Feral Ghouls away temporarily, etc. There’s a lot that could be done,
is my point, and all of it would have the same effect as Undertale’s system: making the setting feel more vibrant and alive, and
forging a personal bond with the player.

In fairness, Bethesda’s already
done a lot to make Fallout 4’s world
feel less static than other sandboxes they’ve made; and their ability to tell
little, compelling stories in that setting is as strong as ever. However, that emotional
component still isn’t quite there, despite your character having a back-story
that is rife with potential for it (you watched your whole hometown including
your spouse die, got catapulted hundreds of years into the future, and are
searching for your kidnapped son – so much opportunity!). Bethesda worlds have always
felt a little sterile and artificial, and Fallout
4 makes great strides to remedy this, mostly on the strength of the colony-building,
but having the option to interface with the rest of the game world on a level beyond
just “shoot and loot” would put it over the top, I think.

Don’t get it twisted, either: Fallout 4 is a great game, and part of
what makes it great is Bethesda’s commitment to making sure that there is no “wrong
way” to play. In previous installments, leveling up came with no shortage of
apprehensions and anxiety – making sure you distributed your skill points
wisely, worrying about taking the wrong perks, or taking your perks in the
wrong order, but in Fallout 4 gaining
levels is an absolute joy. Every option
is a valid option, and the game seems to tailor the combat to be both fair and
gratifying regardless of how you spend your points. I hope that Bethesda
expands that approach in their next game, be it Fallout 5 or The Elder
Scrolls VI, and follows that line through to the non-combat gameplay. They
cribbed notes from some of the best in the business for Fallout 4 – the influences of Mass
Effect, Destiny, Telltale's The Walking Dead, and Minecraft are readily apparent – so let’s
hope they crib a little from Undertale next
time, and give us some nonviolent options that are just as satisfying and rewarding
as the slow-mo exploding-head routine.

MCA Records was a leader in signing and distributing some of the biggest rock stars back in the seventies. From Elton John to The Who, their stable of artists were a major influence in the soundtrack of my youth. Today’s pick six is some of the great hits from that era. Enjoy.

Don’t Do Me Like That - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: No list of consequence wouldn’t include Tom Petty. I know Tom had his problems with MCA over the price of his records, but he along with Jimmy Iovine on the boards, released music that has stood the test of time.

The Real Me - The Who: Influential iconoclasts The Who dominated FM AOR stations in those days. They have plenty of songs to choose from their golden days, all guaranteed to hit all the emotional notes of being a teenager.

FM - Steely Dan: Of course I would include Steely Dan. Progenitors of Jazz/Rock fusion, their smooth sound lulled me to sleep on many a night.

We’re Here For A Good Time (Not A Long Time) - Trooper: A nice jam from a band that is not easily remembered. A slight Jamaican vibe permeates this song that sums up the feeling most of us had

Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting - Elton John: True story, my mom turned me on to Elton John. She must not of listened to Bernie Taupin’s lyrics very closely. This is yet another catchy tune from the prolific pair.

She Flies On Strange Wings - Golden Earring: I know Golden Earring is best known for the great Radar Love, but this song has just stuck to me all these years. I think it’s the guitar. You have to admit it’s pretty impressive.

PREFACE: I had the good fortune to catch the pilot for Supergirl at Chicago Comic Con, and thought I'd share my thoughts. This is a review of a show that airs on October 26th, so a few things could change between this preview and the actual pilot. Additionally, obviously SPOILER WARNING (not that there's any huge revelations in this first episode) for both Supergirl and kinda Flash and Agent Carter. You have been warned. HINT: If you'd like a TL;DR version of this review, scroll down to the grade (about three quarters of the way through the article) and read on.

I just discovered these guys via Apple MUSIC, which I adore. I have never used a streaming service, so I can't really review this because I am enamored with the idea of having a huge music library a mouse click away. These guys came from a For You playlist called 6:00 AM Morning Glory. The For You playlists are awesome for finding new bands and rediscovering old favorites.

This is a gentle love song for my dear wife on this Saturday morning. Here is Angus & Julia with For You

When I was younger I loved Diana Ross and the Supremes. They were glamorous and their songs were wonderful. I was too young to appreciate many of the other women coming out of Motown at the time, though their music has surpassed the Supremes as I've grown older. For me, many of these women sing with pain- depth- struggle. They are women whose voices are raw with emotion and whose messages do talk of love but also speak of strength, survival, resilience.For Friday's Pick Six- some great women voices from the Motown years.

Diana Ross and the Supremes - Love is Here

Martha and the Vandellas - Heat Wave/Nowhere to Run

Tammy Terrell - I cried

Gladys Night and the Pips - If I were your woman (I do LOVE this song!)

Mary Wells - You Beat me to the Punch

The Velvelettes - These things will keep me loving you

And because I love it- a bonus track of Tammi singing with Marvin Gaye: